


We Can't Eat That. It's Dead

by 27dragons, tisfan



Series: Sarcasm Prompts [15]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Cannibalistic Thoughts, Dead People, Hiding a Body, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 10:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17343629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/27dragons/pseuds/27dragons, https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: When Eddie finds a dead body... who's he gonna call.Two guesses, and it ain't the ghost busters.





	We Can't Eat That. It's Dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flight_Of_Icarus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flight_Of_Icarus/gifts).



> 120\. Tony and Eddie? (the-flightoficarus) “This is fun.” “Seriously, we’re trying to hide a body.”

“The best way to deal with a dead body is not to kill anyone in the _first place_ ,” Eddie complained.

**We didn’t kill him** , Venom said, sounding almost reasonable for a blob of blackish alien goo that happened to be mostly sentient. That said, Venom was also frequently denying that he’d eaten the last of the chocolates, or set the toaster oven on fire. Venom and truth had a nodding acquaintance at best. **He was just dead.**

The dead guy didn’t say anything. He was, as Venom pointed out helpfully, just dead.

Dead and _stinking_ and covered with moving wriggly things that Tony didn’t want to think about too much. Eddie had, either reflexively or out of courtesy to Tony, actually covered the body with a tablecloth, but Eddie’s table wasn’t that big, and the tablecloth wasn’t large enough to cover the whole body.

Which meant the dead man’s feet were sticking out. The skin on his calves was livid, a little oily. He was wearing old sneakers, no socks, and fashionably torn jeans. The rest of the details, Tony was sure he’d see in his dreams again, even from just a brief glance before Eddie had whisked the table cloth onto the cadaver.

He swallowed down his gorge (again) and turned around, scanning the rest of the apartment. “Ah-ha.” He grabbed up Eddie’s laptop from its spot on the coffee table and found a convenient spot on the kitchen counter for it. He opened a network tunnel and started typing. “ _Why_ is there a dead body in your apartment, Eddie?”

“I didn’t kill him, either,” Eddie said, although, because it was Eddie, he didn’t entirely sound certain of that. “He was just… there. I mean, the door’s never closed right, not since Vee smashed it in a few times. We fixed it, but. You know… he just. Mighta wandered in?”

**We don’t like the police** , Venom said. Tony wondered if Eddie knew that Venom and Eddie had the same vocal tells. It was frequently like listening to Eddie argue with a slightly more aggressive form of himself.

“Wandered in?” Tony glanced up from his typing to give both of them a dubious look. “And hung around long enough to start _rotting?_ How long has it been since you were back here?”

“A while,” Eddie admitted. “I got a contract job, doing some investigative reporting in Wyoming, of all places. What, about a week out there, I guess? And travel time.”

**We ran most of the way. We don’t like airplanes either.**

Tony huffed and went back to typing. “What _do_ you like?”

**Chocolate. Tater Tots. Moose. We liked the moose. Eddie. Eddie’s toes.**

“Can we not talk about that, huh, Vee?”

Tony was more concerned about the moose, and what, exactly, Venom had liked about it, but he had learned that it was better not to ask. He finished presenting his bonafides to the server and--

“Good evening, sir. How may I be of service?”

“Fire up the facial recognition database,” Tony said. He picked up the laptop and angled it, then waved at Eddie. “Uncover the face.”

Eddie was very tentative about it, all but shrieking as he moved the cloth out of the way. For a man who carried around an alien parasite and occasionally fed it people (very bad people. Usually.) he was also kinda squeamish. Not that Tony blamed him. Rotting people were very viscerally upsetting.

“I see you’re in San Francisco,” JARVIS observed. “Good evening, Mr. Brock.”

Tony checked that the camera could see the face. “Look this guy up for us, would you, J?”

“One moment, sir,” JARVIS said. “Reconstructing from scans… I anticipate-- there. Mr. Troy Ralston.” JARVIS offered the man’s DMV record. “Resident of Washington D.C., employed as an aide to Senator Christian Ward. Reported missing three days ago, sir.”

**WARD,** Venom snarled. He went from being semi-cute little shoulder decor to full on raging monstrosity, along with teeth and excessive amounts of tongue.

Tony backed up a little -- Venom took up a lot more space than Eddie -- and put the laptop back on the counter. “Who’s Ward? J, what do we know about Senator Ward? And why is his aide on the wrong side of the country and _dead in Eddie’s apartment_?”

JARVIS’s files turned out a picture of the Senator, along with his family history, voting record, and other boring sorts of things.

“He tried to bag me and Vee once, a few months ago,” Eddie said. “We… uh, kinda had to threaten him. A bit.”

**We should have just eaten him.**

“No, no, we, no, we don’t eat United States Senators,” Eddie said, holding his hands out, placating his pet monster. “People _notice_ when shit like that happens. Besides, you said he smelled funny.”

**He does.**

“Which doesn’t, you know, help us with the fact that his aide is here, now,” Eddie said, then shrugged, “I suppose you could eat him, if you wanted? Get rid of the evidence?”

**He is dead. We don’t eat dead things, Eddie. We are not accipitriformes.** The symbiote sounded almost smug.

“Venom’s been watching a lot of _Animal Planet_ ,” Eddie explained with a wave.

“Good for you, big guy,” Tony said. “That doesn’t really help us with the whole _dead body in the apartment_ deal, though. I mean, ideally, we call the police and tell them we just _found_ him like this. Which is the truth.” He gave Venom a hard stare. “It _is_ the truth, right?”

Eddie scratched his chin; there were several days of scruffy beard growth there. “Yeah, but this guy, I mean… we got history with the Senator, who will not hesitate-- Venom needs to stay on the down-low, and having my place crawling with cops is not good for that. You know how he is. Which is, uh, why I called you. You said to call you, when I wanted to have a good time. I mean, this is fun, right?”

“Seriously, we’re trying to hide a _body_ ,” Tony hissed. “You’ve been hanging around with no one but Venom for company for too long, if you think this is fun, and this is _not_ the good time I had in mind!” He scrubbed his hands over his face, shoved his fingers through his hair. “Okay, I can...”

**Wood chipper. We saw it in a movie.**

Tony groaned and thunked his head against a kitchen cabinet. “No. Eddie, seriously, have you not explained _forensic science_ to your partner, at all?” He looked over the table, trying to avoid looking directly at the body, doing the math in his head, but all the equations boiled down to the same thing. “Damn it. I’m going to owe Lang a favor.”

“At least he’s a local?” Eddie suggested. “What’s the plan, we’re gonna, shrink the body and--”

**Flush it down the toilet? Please? Like a goldfish, Eddie, like a goldfish. We can say a few words!**

Tony pressed his fingers to his temples. “I am going to owe Lang a _huge_ favor. He’s going to make me be _nice_ to his girlfriend. Or worse, his girlfriend’s _dad_.”

“Eh, Hope’s not so bad,” Eddie said. “Cute, short, feisty. She reminds me of you.” He poked his fingertips together a few times. “Look, I know this… would you let us take you out to dinner, later? As a thank you? And better for that whole _good time_ you were thinking about?”

Tony sighed. “At least save the flirting until there’s not a dead body in your apartment anymore.”

**We will make an appointment.**


End file.
